The customer service department drives IT design and decisions, and you will be expected to decipher these requirements. The software developer is also a project manager.
Management at SPECMO seems to lack the necessity to plan for the future. All of the technology that resides at Specmo is decided by a single person, and that mandate is handed down. This creates an additional silo of knowledge and stifles company growth and any team initiative within the IT department.
Management is also at a constant fight toward eachother. When you are with your department, you will hear nothing but trash talk about every other manager that works in the company.
The multiple departments do not work well together, and there is almost careful segregation put in to ensure job security for the folks making the decisions. (Almost no transparency or appropriate venue to supply input.)
Meetings aren't practical, there are never any meeting notes and there is never any accountability given toward the stakeholders. Certain managers send delegates on their behalf as a means to remove accountability of said responsibility, toward the product.
Requirements do not exist, and all architecture and technical documents are at least 5+ years old - making word of mouth the only possible way to understand how the system works.
When an employee tries to take their time learning said software processes, I have seen and experienced first hand chastisement in regards to wanting to spend extra time learning said processes instead of being able to quickly fix the issue.(It's possible that nobody will have any idea how to even solve the problem, but you will be expected to understand the problem entirely.)
Almost everything is word of mouth, or decided by a single few people without including the opinions of other workers.
On a daily basis, you will be subjected to impartial and unfair rules that are almost written specifically to include bias. You will notice that their are an unlimited number of personal days at your disposal, and at your own liking you may use them. However, if you do - you may be reprimanded for using them.
Almost daily, there were conversations from co-workers that would be on their cell phones for hours discussing their children's sporting events. However, if you accept a call for longer than 5 minutes, prepare to be judged.
For more, please see advice to management.